Wednesday, October 26, 2016

It's the Little Things

As I do nearly every morning, I watched the window behind
the morning group on The Today Show. It bothers me so much to
see people jumping up and down and waving their arms wildly while you're
trying to listen to whatever is being discussed by the talking heads.
Don't they know they look like idiots?

The people I have the most respect for are the camera men
who try to find angles to shoot the stars while cutting off the audience.
There is an art to it.

Before one of the last debates, I was watching MSNBC and
Chris Matthews was having a very serious discussion on their outdoor stage
while one guy standing behind the stage practically turned himself inside
out to get noticed. The camera man shot the group on stage from the
side, then did close ups, and occasionally went back to the full table and
the idiot trying to disrupt everything.

(Speaking of my respect for camera men, do you realize that
every time you watch some guy climbing a high peak or doing something else
amazing that there is a cameraman who is doing it ahead of him, carrying
camera equipment.)

As I watched the idiots in the Today Show audience, I
was thinking about the little things that irritate me.

We are right in the middle of the deluge of political ads
right now and there are some that get me every time.

There is one guy -- a Trump supporter -- who is running an
attack ad against his opponent which says that he is backed by
environmentalists (oooo...big bad environmentalists) and that if his
opponent is elected, he will cut off water to the central valley,
which would, of course, be disastrous and sounds ominous unless you
understand that the opponent is a farmer in the central valley!!!
I guess he is counting on people in cities not to realize how ridiculous
that threat is (besides, "backed by environmentalists" would be a plus
in my book!)

There is a guy running for Senate who promises that he has a
plan that will end the Iraq war.

There is an ad being run over and over and over again
attacking a candidate based on the fact that he sexually harassed a woman 20
years ago. "a" woman. "20" years ago. While I certainly
don't condone sexual abuse, if that is all they have against him, it doesn't
sound like much.

Then there is the guy, currently in the House, who is
running for re-election and his father was running some sort of a
money-laundering scam. The ad says that if he was aware of his
father's actions, he's corrupt. If he wasn't aware, he's completely
incompetent

Then there are the state propositions. The one that is
getting most attention is Proposition 61, which is backed by Bernie Sanders,
who says we have to stick it to the pharmaceutical companies and who thanks
California for standing up to the pharmaceutical industry. Sounds
good, right? But the "no" vote is backed by just about every medical
and and veterans groups in the state who all say it only lowers prescription
prices on a few and raises it on everyone else. I was waiting to see
what the democrats would recommend and it turns out that when we got our
list of proposition recommendations, 61 was one of only two on which they
had no recommendation! It sounds like this is "damned if you do,
damned if you don't" vote! I am having voter angst about this proposition.
Based on the very long list of
organizations opposed to this proposition, I can only assume Bernie
Sanders was duped into making an ad supporting it.

There is also Prop 53, which would require voter approval
for infrastructure-related revenue bonds totaling $2 billion, adjusted for
inflation, or more. The "NO" add is ridiculous and says that big
cities like San Francisco would decide what happens to things like road
repair and (this is the part that gets me) if the "big one" hits
the Sacramento area, could
delay repairs for years. I'm sorry, but if "the big one" hits, it's
gonna hit cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles first!!! In fact, if
"the big one" is big enough to cause severe damage in Sacramento, it has
probably destroyed San Francisco. In comparison,
Sacramento will have very little damage (notice I stressed "in comparison").

However opposition (or support) for this bill depends on where you live:

The “No on Prop. 53” team has
ads running statewide, denouncing the ballot measure as a threat to
public safety and local control. But what you see depends on where you
live.

In the Bay Area, for example, the ad features Alameda firefighter
Juan Medrano, who warns that Prop. 53 would allow
“voters in the Central Valley or Los Angeles to veto local projects
we need, like fixing bridges and road safety.”

In Los Angeles,
though, an L.A. fire captain says that same ballot measure would
allow “voters in the Central Valley or San Francisco to veto local
projects we need, like water supply and road safety.”

And in Sacramento, it’s those evil voters in San Francisco and
Los Angeles who will strip the power to improve water supply and
road safety from the good people of the state capital and its
surrounds.

In the Central Valley, it’s those city slickers in San Francisco
and Los Angeles they need to worry about, while in San Diego those
folks outside the friendly confines of Southern California, in San
Francisco and Central Valley, plan to impose their will on the
oceanside community.

(from The San Francisco Chronicle)

Apparently a lot of us are having voter angst right now. So
many that many of the talk shows are having segments on how to handle it,
and Dr. Oz (whom I don't watch) devoted a whole show to how to cope with all
the anxiety surrounding this election.

Apparently no matter who becomes our next president, it is
the end of the world as we have known it, according to the other side. Perhaps we are gearing up to
the zombie apocalypse. So people are either not going to vote or are
going to vote for someone who hasn't a chance of winning (I hear the
alternate candidate in Utah, who is not running anywhere else, may actually
be winning that state. Nice for a protest vote, but we have to
elect a real president people! and a throw-away vote like that will help
one of the candidates you don't like into office.)